After black-clad demonstrators protested Donald Trump's inauguration in an "Anti-Capitalist/Anti-Fascist Bloc" march on January 20, 2017, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., charged more than 200 of them with rioting. While 21 defendants pleaded guilty, all of the other cases ended in acquittals, mistrials, or charges dismissed with prejudice. One reason for that fiasco, according to recently filed disciplinary charges, was the discovery that the federal prosecutor who oversaw the cases persistently withheld exculpatory evidence and repeatedly lied about it to judges and defense attorneys.

In a "specification of charges" filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals Board of Professional Responsibility last month, Disciplinary Counsel Hamilton P. Fox III alleges that Jennifer Kerkhoff Muyskens, who is now a federal prosecutor in Utah but previously worked at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, violated six rules of professional conduct while trying to convict "DisruptJ20" protesters, including many who had not participated in vandalism or violence. Muyskens "knew that most defendants did not commit violent acts themselves," Fox notes, but "she argued that these defendants were still liable for felony rioting and felony property destruction because they joined a criminal conspiracy to use the protest march to further the violence and destruction that occurred."

To support that theory, Muyskens presented video of a DisruptJ20 planning meeting that had been clandestinely recorded by an "operative" from Project Veritas, a conservative group that frequently has been accused of using misleadingly edited videos to portray progressive and leftist organizations in a negative light. Although Muyskens "understood Project Veritas had a reputation for editing videos in a misleading way," Fox says, she initially concealed the source of the video, saying in court that "who provided it is irrelevant." And although Muyskens "knew that Project Veritas had omitted and edited some of its videos" before releasing them, Fox adds, she "did not request or obtain Project Veritas's missing videos or unedited footage."

According to Fox, Muyskens and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Detective Greggory Pemberton edited the meeting footage in ways that bolstered the prosecution's case, and Muyskens covered up the extent of those edits. Fox says Muyskens also withheld Project Veritas videos of other DisruptJ20 meetings that would have been helpful to the defense, pretending that they did not exist. And she allegedly concealed the fact that Pemberton, in testimony to a grand jury, had erroneously identified one of the DisruptJ20 defendants as a woman who appears in the video of the planning meeting.

According to the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Brady v. Maryland, due process requires prosecutors to share potentially exculpatory evidence with the defense. Fox says Muyskens violated that rule by excising footage and withholding videos that could have been useful in rebutting the prosecution's case.

The material that Muyskens and Pemberton excised from the planning meeting video included footage that would have revealed its provenance. They also cut footage of a phone call in which a Project Veritas infiltrator told a colleague, "I don't think they know anything about the upper echelon stuff."

The excised footage "revealed that the video was filmed as part of Project Veritas's infiltration of DisruptJ20, which tended to undermine the credibility and reliability of the government's evidence," Fox writes. "In addition, the operative's post-meeting report indicated that some DisruptJ20 protest organizers did not know anything about plans or decisions that were being made by an 'upper echelon.' This lack of knowledge supported the non-violent defendants' theory that, assuming a plan to riot existed at all, only a small group was involved, which they knew nothing about. Alternatively, if the operative was discussing protest organizers being unaware of Project Veritas's 'upper echelon' plans, the statements supported…claims that Project Veritas conspired to frame DisruptJ20 defendants for third-party violence, including by possibly inciting violence themselves. Both judges who later considered the issue…found that the complete, unedited footage was exculpatory."

The videos that Muyskens withheld included evidence that, contrary to the prosecution's narrative, the DisruptJ20 protest was supposed to be peaceful. Those videos "were exculpatory," Fox explains, "because they showed that DisruptJ20 planning meetings consistently involved training and instructing protesters how to participate in its unpermitted 'Actions,' including the anti-capitalist march, as non-violent protests, using nonviolence and de-escalation techniques, which supported the non-violent defendants' claim that their intent was merely to peacefully protest."

The undisclosed videos also "showed Project Veritas operatives discussing their infiltration operation of DisruptJ20, which supported the defense's theory that Project Veritas conspired to blame DisruptJ20 for others' misconduct," Fox notes. "For example, the undisclosed videos showed Project Veritas operatives discussing—before the Inauguration protests—how they were providing information on DisruptJ20 to the FBI, how there was likely to be violence from 'outside influencers,' and how DisruptJ20 would 'catch the blame' for outsiders' misconduct because the FBI was 'going to say' that they incited it."

In court, Fox says, Muyskens "falsely said that the government had made only two edits, which were both to redact the identity of the videographer and an undercover officer," and "that, other than the two redactions, the defense had the same videos as the government." She "falsely told the court that she had provided defense counsel with 'the full entirety of those videos from that day.'"

According to Fox, "Pemberton testified falsely that Project Veritas had produced only the four disclosed video segments of the [planning meeting video]" and that "the only editing the government did was to combine the first three video segments into one exhibit to be played at trial." Muyskens and Pemberton "did not disclose how they had edited the original videos they received from Project Veritas," and they did not "disclose that they had omitted from discovery many other videos Project Veritas videos of DisruptJ20's planning meetings."

Muyskens told a judge that Project Veritas had "provided unedited video" at Pemberton's request and that "we posted the video" to the discovery portal. Those statements, Fox says, "were false and misleading." Muyskens also "falsely said that other than redacting the identities of the Project Veritas operative and [the undercover officer], 'the defense has the exact video we have.'" The judge "later found that [Muyskens] 'left a clear impression' that she had disclosed everything that Project Veritas had produced."

Muyskens told another judge that "the government had 'provided the clips as we have them'" and that "'the only editing' by the government 'was to combine the three clips' of the anti-capitalist 'breakout' into a single video exhibit for trial." Those statements also "were false and misleading," Fox says.

Muyskens eventually "acknowledged that the government had additional, undisclosed Project Veritas videos of DisruptJ20's planning meetings." But she "mischaracterized them and falsely suggested that they were irrelevant."

During the investigation of her conduct, Fox says, Muyskens "repeated her false statements and material omissions" regarding the video edits, the withheld videos, her suppression of "relevant information and evidence," her failure to produce grand jury transcripts from the misidentified defendant's case, her "misrepresentations and omissions to the grand jury, the defense, and the court," and her failure to "correct known misrepresentations to the court." She also "made additional false statements and material omissions to falsely explain her conduct." She claimed, for example, that the undisclosed videos "were irrelevant and did not discuss the anti-capitalist march."

Fox says Muyskens' actions violated the District of Columbia's Rules of Professional Conduct in half a dozen ways:

1. She allegedly violated Rule 3.3(a) by "knowingly making false statements, offering false evidence, and failing to correct material false statements to the court."

2. She allegedly violated three sections of Rule 3.4 by "obstructing the defense's access to evidence and altering or concealing evidence, or assisting another person to do so when she reasonably should have known that the evidence was or may have been subject to discovery; knowingly disobeying the court's direct orders to produce information in the government's possession without openly asserting that no valid obligation existed; and/or failing to make reasonably diligent efforts to comply with the defense's discovery requests."

3. She allegedly violated two sections of Rule 3.8 by "intentionally avoiding pursuit of evidence and information because it may have damaged the prosecution's case or aided the defense; and by intentionally failing to disclose to the defense, upon request and at a time when use by the defense was reasonably feasible, evidence and information that she knew or reasonably should have known tended to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigate the offense."

4. She allegedly violated Rule 8.4(a) by "knowingly assisting or inducing another to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct and/or doing so through the acts of another."

5. She allegedly violated Rule 8.4(c) by "engaging in conduct that involved reckless or intentional dishonesty, misrepresentations, deceit, and fraud, which misled the grand jury, the defense, the court, the government, and disciplinary authorities about the
evidence in the government's possession and the government's conduct."

6. She allegedly violated Rule 8.4(d) by "engaging in conduct that seriously interfered with the administration of justice."

Possible sanctions against Muyskens range from "temporary suspension of her law license to full disbarment," Washington City Paper notes. The Washington Post reports that lawyers for Muyskens did not respond to requests for comment and that "Pemberton also did not respond to an inquiry." The U.S. attorney's offices in D.C. and Utah "declined to comment." So did the MPD, which "would not say whether the department has opened an investigation of Pemberton, who now chairs the police labor union."

The failed prosecutions and the disciplinary charges against Muyskens are not the only embarrassments stemming from the Inauguration Day march. In 2021, the Post notes, "the D.C. government agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle two lawsuits" by protesters who argued that the police response to the DisruptJ20 march violated their First Amendment rights.

"It speaks volumes that the District has chosen to settle rather than defend MPD's obviously unconstitutional actions in court," Jeffrey Light, one of the protesters' attorneys, said when the settlement was announced. Scott Michelman, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, added that "MPD's unconstitutional guilt-by-association policing and excessive force, including the use of chemical weapons, not only injured our clients physically but also chilled their speech and the speech of countless others who wished to exercise their First Amendment rights but feared an unwarranted assault by D.C. police."

The post Prosecutor of Anti-Trump Protesters Allegedly Withheld Exculpatory Evidence and Lied About It appeared first on Reason.com.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration is once again trying to carve out broad new exemptions to the state's celebrated government transparency law. 

This time, lawyers for DeSantis are arguing that call logs from a high-ranking staffer's phone aren't public record, even though the staffer was conducting government business, because it was a private phone.

The Tampa Bay Times first reported Thursday that lawyers for the DeSantis administration argued in court this week before a Leon County judge that the governor's office shouldn't be compelled to turn over call logs from DeSantis' Chief of Staff James Uthmeier's private cellphone.

The Florida Center for Government Accountability sued the DeSantis administration in 2022 for records concerning the migrant flights to Martha's Vineyard that DeSantis organized that year using state resources. The governor's office has turned over many records so far—and disclosed that Uthmeier and other staff used personal email addresses and phones rather than their state-issued ones—but it is currently defying a court order to release Uthmeier's phone logs.

"Florida is no longer the Sunshine State when it comes to transparency," says Michael Barfield, the Center's director of public access. "The public's right to know is headed into darkness."

Public records laws are commonly interpreted at both the federal and state levels, including in Florida, to cover records created on private devices and accounts if they concern government business. For example, the 2023 edition of the Florida attorney general's Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual states that "the mere fact that an e-mail is sent from a private e-mail account using a personal computer is not the determining factor as to whether it is a public record; it is whether the e-mail was prepared or received in connection with official agency business."

The manual also notes that "a public official or employee's use of a private cell phone to conduct public business via text messaging 'can create an electronic written public record subject to disclosure' if the text message is 'prepared, owned, used, or retained…within the scope of his or her employment or agency.'"

But DeSantis' lawyers are arguing that Uthmeier's call logs are "tertiary data," the Tampa Bay Times reports:

"If you hold that these tertiary data points are somehow public records that also have to be captured by a public records custodian, that is a sweeping — sweeping — interpretation of public records," DeSantis lawyer Christopher Lunny told Leon County Circuit Judge Lee Marsh on Tuesday.

But under that argument, Marsh said, all government business could be shielded from the public.

"We ought to just put out word, 'Let's do all of our business on private, bring-your-own cellphones," Marsh said. "Then we don't need public records laws because there'll be no public records, right?"

As Reason described in a magazine feature last year on Florida's Sunshine Law, the DeSantis administration is not just chipping away at the once-powerful public records law; it's taking a sledgehammer to it. State lawmakers have made the governor's travel records secret, and the DeSantis administration has also tried to invoke executive privilege over other documents, a privilege that is found nowhere in Florida's Sunshine Law and has never been claimed by previous governors.

DeSantis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Ron DeSantis Won't Stop Trying To Gut Florida's Public Records Law appeared first on Reason.com.

Very few governments and government agencies value the transparency and accountability that robust open records laws create. It took an act of Congress to even establish a presumptive right of access to government records. And all across the United States, state governments are always trying to find some way to limit access without getting hit with an injunction from courts that seem far more respectful of this right than the governments and agencies obliged to conform with statutory requirements.

Not for nothing is it pretty much de rigueur to engage in litigation to obtain records from entities legally required to hand them over. New Jersey is the latest state to help itself to more opacity while placing more obligations on the public — you know, the people who pay their salaries. While there have been a few moves towards the positive side of this equation over the past decade, legislators and Governor Phil Murphy have decided the public only deserves to know what the government feels like telling it.

As Matt Friedman reports for Politico, the new normal in New Jersey is discouraging people from suing after their records requests have been blown off by state agencies. This isn’t anything state residents want. This is the governor protecting the government from the people it’s supposed to be serving.

The problematic law doesn’t dial back any obligations to respond to requests. Instead, it’s a bit more nefarious. It assumes government entities will fail to comply with their statutory obligations, but passes that cost on to the people directly by making it far more expensive to force records out of agencies’ hands.

Here’s the impetus:

The push for the bill has largely come from lobbyists for county and local governments, who say records custodians are burdened by commercial and unreasonable requests by a small number of people.

And here’s the outcome:

Most controversially, the legislation would end the current practice of mandatory “fee shifting,” in which governments pay the “reasonable” legal costs for any requester who successfully challenges a records denial in court. It would instead leave it up to a judge, who would only be required to award the legal costs to the plaintiff if they determine the denial was made in “bad faith,” “unreasonably,” or the government agency “knowingly or willfully” violated the law.

That places the burden of litigation almost entirely on records requesters. If they decide to initiate litigation to obtain what the law says the state must turn over, they’re now faced with the possibility of not being able to recover their litigation costs even if a judge rules a government agency must turn over the requested records. All the government needs to demonstrate (and a judge needs to trust its narrative) is that any failure to provide records wasn’t a “knowing” violation of the law. This is the government seeing all the litigation non-compliant agencies generate and somehow arriving at the conclusion that it just must be too easy to sue the government for refusing to uphold its end of the public records bargain.

And that’s not all. The law also grants a presumptive fee burden on requesters, requiring them to demonstrate (to agencies already unwilling to comply with requests) that the requested fees are “unreasonable.” More specificity is also demanded of requesters, which is insane because requesters in some cases can’t possibly know the specifics of the records they’re requesting and will likely only have those specifics if the government agency actually hands over the records.

Bizarrely, it also bars requesters from sharing any photo or video received via a public records request if it contains “any indecent or graphic images of the subject’s intimate part” without getting direct permission from the person captured in the recording or photo. And that makes it pretty easy for the government to bury photos and recordings it doesn’t want to have shared by refusing to redact or blur any footage/photos containing an “intimate part.”

That means things like a violent arrest of person suffering a mental health crisis could be buried just because (as happens frequently in cases like these) the person being violently subdued by cops is underclothed or naked. If nothing else, it passes on the expense of redacting footage to those receiving the recordings, rather than place that obligation on those releasing records that might violate the stipulations of the revised public records law.

The gist of the law — and definitely the gist of the governor’s statement [PDF] in support of his own signature on said law — is that the government is real victim here. It’s being steadily crushed under the litigious heel of requesters who sue when the government violates the law, refuses to hand over records it’s obligated to hand over, or just make what the government considers to be too many records requests.

After a thorough examination of the provisions of the bill, I am persuaded that the changes, viewed comprehensively, are relatively modest.

Hmmm. Except that no one but government entities seeking greater opacity (or at least angling for a lower obligation for responses) is in favor of this law. Anyone actually engaged in transparency and accountability efforts doesn’t see this as “modest” revision of the state’s public records law, much less as a win for the general public. This is the government doing what it does with its greatest enthusiasm: protecting itself from the people it’s supposed to be serving.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry last week signed a law that criminalizes approaching police officers within 25 feet, provided that the officer tells any would-be approachers to stand back, effectively creating a legal force field that law enforcement can activate at their discretion.

"No person shall knowingly or intentionally approach within twenty-five feet of a peace officer who is lawfully engaged in the execution of his official duties after the peace officer has ordered the person to stop approaching or to retreat," the law states. Offenders could receive a $500 fine and be jailed for up to 60 days.

The bill was authored by state Reps. Bryan Fontenot (R–Thibodaux), Michael T. Johnson (R–Pineville), and Roger Wilder (R–Denham Springs). Fontenot argued that the legislation would give law enforcement officials "peace of mind" as they carry out their duties. That's the same argument Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made to justify signing Senate Bill 184 in April, which criminalizes approaching within 25 feet of a first responder with the intent to threaten, harass, or interfere with the official.

But some opponents of these laws believe they are overly broad and unnecessary.

"Requiring a 25-foot distance from a police officer may not be a practical or effective approach in many situations," state Rep. Delisha Boyd (D–New Orleans) tells Reason. "Policing situations vary widely, and a blanket requirement for a 25-foot distance may not account for the diverse scenarios officers encounter. Who on the scene will determine what exactly is 25 feet away? What happens if within that 25 feet is on my personal property?"

Louisiana already has a law outlawing "interfering with a law enforcement investigation." Critics of the new law say that an additional law proscribing the simple act of approaching police is superfluous.

One such critic is Meghan Garvey, the legislative chair and former president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Police work "is already protected from interference by current law," she tells Reason. "The measure criminalizes citizens for engaging in constitutionally protected activity and discourages citizen oversight of law enforcement."

The law, "like many other bills brought this session, seeks to make Louisianans more subservient to government," Garvey concludes.

The Louisiana Legislature passed a similar bill, House Bill 85, in June 2023, but that measure was vetoed by former Gov. John Bel Edwards. "The effect of this bill were it to become law would be to chill exercise of First Amendment rights and prevent bystanders from observing and recording police action," Edwards said in a statement explaining his veto.

Though the Supreme Court has declined to address the issue, there is significant legal precedent in the circuit courts—including in the 5th Circuit, which contains Louisiana—that the First Amendment's press and speech clauses collectively safeguard a "right to record the police." Last year, a federal judge struck down an Arizona measure that outlawed filming police from within 8 feet after receiving a verbal warning because it "prohibits or chills a substantial amount of First Amendment protected activity and is unnecessary to prevent interference with police officers given other Arizona laws in effect."

In Louisiana, "an officer could be arresting someone in a manner indicating excessive force, have a bystander approach to record the arrest, and the bystander could then be immediately told by the officer 'to stop approaching or to retreat,' chilling the bystander's right to record," Louisiana attorney Philip Adams tells Reason. "Thus, the bystander could be placed in a position in which the First Amendment right to record could be functionally neutered." 

The post Louisiana's New 25-Foot Legal Forcefield for Police Threatens Accountability and Civil Liberties appeared first on Reason.com.

In a recent essay in the journal Monash Bioethics Review, oncologist Vinay Prasad and health researcher Alyson Haslam provide a comprehensive after-the-fact assessment of the federal government's rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Their basic takeaway is that the vaccines were a "scientific success" tarnished by flawed federal vaccine policy.

The two argue the tremendous benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines for the elderly were undercut by government guidance and messaging that pushed vaccines on the young, healthy, and previously infected when data suggested that wasn't worthwhile (and was in some cases counterproductive).

Worse still, the government even pushed vaccine mandates when it was increasingly clear the vaccines did not stop COVID-19 transmission, they argue.

To correct these errors for future pandemic responses, Prasad and Haslam recommend performing larger vaccine trials and collecting better data on vaccine performance in lower-risk populations. They also urge policy makers to be more willing to acknowledge the tradeoffs of vaccination.

That's sound advice. We'll have to wait and see if the government adopts it come the next pandemic.

There is one policy that they don't mention and doesn't totally depend on the government getting better at judging the risks of new vaccines: Charge people for them.

Had the government not provided COVID-19 vaccines for free and shielded vaccine makers and administrators from any liability for adverse reactions, prices could have better rationed vaccine supply and better informed people about their risks and benefits.

Without prices, people were instead left with flawed government recommendations, incentives, and rationing schemes.

Those who recall early 2021 will remember the complex, often transparently silly eligibility criteria state governments set up to ration scarce vaccine supplies. This often involved prioritizing younger, healthier, often politically connected "essential workers" over elderly people.

Prasad and Haslam criticize this as a government failure to prioritize groups at most risk of dying from COVID-19.

"While the UK prioritized nursing home residents and older individuals…the US included essential workers, including young, resident physicians," write Prasad and Haslam. "Health care workers face higher risks of acquiring the virus due to occupation (though this was and is offset by available personal protective equipment), but this was less than the elevated risk of death faced by older individuals."

Yet if the government hadn't assigned itself the role of distributing vaccines for free, it wouldn't have been forced into this position of rationing scarce vaccine supplies.

Demand for the vaccine is a function of the vaccine's price. Since the vaccine's price was $0, people who stood to gain comparatively less from vaccination and people for whom a vaccine would be lifesaving were equally incentivized to receive it.

Consequently, everyone rushed to get in line at the same time. The government then had to decide who got it first and predictably made flawed decisions.

Had vaccine makers been left to sell their product on an open market (instead of selling doses in bulk to the federal government to distribute for free), the elderly and those most at risk of COVID-19 would have been able to outbid people who could afford to wait longer. Perhaps more lives could have been saved.

Over the course of 2021, the supply of vaccines outgrew demand.

At the same time, as Prasad and Haslam recount, an increasing number of people (particularly young men) were developing myocarditis as a result of vaccination. Nevertheless, the government downplayed this risk, continued to urge younger populations to get vaccinated, and failed to collect data about the potential risks of vaccination.

That's all a failure of the government policy. Even if the government was slow to adjust its recommendations, prices could have played a constructive role in informing people about their own risk-reward tradeoff of getting vaccinated.

If a 20-year-old man who'd already had COVID-19 had to spend something to get vaccinated, instead of nothing, fewer would have. Prasad and Haslam argue that would have been the right call healthwise.

Without prices, that hypothetical 20-year-old's decision was informed mostly by government guidance, and, later, government mandates.

The government compounded this lack of prices by giving liability shields to vaccine makers. As it stands right now, no one is able to sue the maker of a COVID-19 vaccine should they have an adverse reaction. (Unlike standard, non-COVID vaccines, people are also not allowed to sue the government for compensation for the vaccine injuries.)

If pharmaceutical companies had to charge individual consumers to make money off their vaccines, and if those prices had to reflect the liability risks of the side effects some number of people would inevitably have, consumers would have been even better informed about the risks and rewards of vaccination.

One might counter that individual consumers aren't in a position to perform this risk-reward calculation on their own.

That ignores the ways that other intermediaries in a better position to evaluate the costs and benefits of vaccination could contribute to the price signals individuals would use to make their own decisions.

One could imagine an insurance company declining to cover COVID-19 vaccines for the aforementioned healthy 20-year-old while subsidizing their elderly customers to get the shot. (This is, of course, illegal right now. The Affordable Care Act requires most insurance plans to cover the costs of vaccination for everyone.)

Instead, the financial incentives that were attached to vaccination were another part of the federally subsidized vaccination campaign.

State Medicaid programs paid providers bonuses for the number of patients they vaccinated (regardless of how at risk of COVID-19 those patients were). State governments gave out gift cards to those who got vaccinated and entered them in lotteries to win even bigger prizes.

Leaving it up to private companies to produce and charge for vaccines would have one added benefit: It would make it much more difficult for the government to mandate vaccines or otherwise coerce people into getting them.

One of the things that made it easy for local and state governments to bar the unvaccinated from restaurants and schools was that they also had a lot of free, federally subsidized doses to give away. People didn't have a real "excuse" not to get a shot.

Had people been required to pay for vaccines, it would have been more awkward and much harder (politically and practically) to mandate that they do so.

Economist Alex Tabarrok likes to say that a "price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive." They signal crucial information and then incentivize people to act on that information in a rational, efficient way.

By divorcing COVID-19 vaccines from real price signals, we were left with an earnest, government-led vaccination effort. That effort got a lot of lifesaving vaccines to a lot of people.

But it also encouraged and subsidized people to get vaccinated when it was probably not a necessary or even good idea. When not enough people got vaccinated, governments turned to coercive mandates.

The post The COVID-19 Vaccines Shouldn't Have Been Free appeared first on Reason.com.

Prosecutors in Texas last week dismissed the criminal case against a journalist who, in 2021, was arrested, strip-searched, and jailed for filming police. But his lengthy legal battle is in some sense just beginning and once again demands we probe the idea that real journalists are entitled to a different set of rights than the public.

That's because Justin Pulliam, the man in question, is a citizen journalist. He is not employed by an outlet. Rather, he publishes his reporting to his YouTube channel, Corruption Report, which, true to its name, is unapologetically skeptical of state power and supportive of transparency.

The Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office (FBSCO) has allegedly been vexed by his audacity. In July 2021, Pulliam was expelled by police from a press conference because they alleged he did not qualify as media, and in December of that same year, he was arrested for videoing police at a mental health call, despite that he had stationed himself about 130 feet away from the interaction. Officer Taylor Rollins demanded Pulliam move back even further, and he obliged, although he continued to film the deputy speaking to other bystanders at the scene (none of whom were arrested).

That didn't end well for Pulliam, who was charged with interfering with police duties. (According to his complaint, Officer Ricky Rodriguez, who assisted with the arrest, told another cop at the jail that the ordeal would teach Pulliam a lesson "for fucking with us.") In April 2023, a jury was not able to reach a verdict in the case, with five jurors wanting to acquit and one urging to convict. It took law enforcement more than a year to decide not to pursue the case further.

One wonders if the Fort Bend government is smartly allocating resources in support of public safety when it doggedly went after a case because someone filmed them. Yet at a deeper level, it's worth asking if law enforcement would have taken the case to trial at all had Pulliam worked for a formal media outlet. My guess is no.

It is difficult to reconcile those two things. Journalism is, after all, an activity, consisting of collecting information and reporting it to the public. That venture is not exclusively available to people working at a full-time newsgathering organization, and the strength of the First Amendment should not hinge on whether or not you are on a media outlet's payroll. Even if Pulliam didn't consider himself a journalist at all—citizen or otherwise—his right to film the government employees he pays with his taxes should remain intact. It certainly shouldn't come at the expense of his freedom.

Whether or not he will be able to make that case before a jury in civil court is yet to be determined. Last June, Judge David Hittner of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas allowed Pulliam's federal lawsuit to proceed, declining to award the defendants qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that shields state and local government actors from such claims if their alleged misconduct was not already "clearly established" in the law. 

"The Individual Defendants assert no case law to support their proposition that an indictment precludes a claim for first amendment infringement," wrote Hittner. "Indeed, based on the facts alleged in the complaint, it appears Pulliam was singled out and arrested for exercising his rights under the First Amendment."

Pulliam, however, is not in the clear. He will next have to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which has considered a similar case in recent months: that of Priscilla Villarreal, the citizen journalist in Laredo, Texas, who police arrested in 2017 using an obscure statute criminalizing the solicitation of nonpublic information if there is the "intent to obtain a benefit." If that description sounds a lot like standard journalism—seeking information not yet public—that's because it is. But despite attracting some strange bedfellows in her defense, Villarreal has not fared well in court.

While her case is not identical to Pulliam's, they both raise very similar questions, particularly as it relates to the idea that a certain class of journalists should get more rights than others. "Villarreal and others portray her as a martyr for the sake of journalism," wrote Judge Edith Jones in her majority opinion dismissing Villarreal's suit and giving qualified immunity to the police. "That is inappropriate," according to Jones, because Villarreal, who posts her reporting to her popular Facebook page Lagordiloca, is not a "mainstream, legitimate media outlet." Her free speech rights are suffering as a result.

The post This Journalist Was Arrested, Strip-Searched, and Jailed for Filming Police. Will He Get Justice? appeared first on Reason.com.

The job of the prosecutor is to hold the public accountable. But when the tables are turned—when the prosecutor is the one who allegedly flouted the law—it is, paradoxically, enormously difficult for victims to achieve recourse. Lawyers yesterday sparred at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit over one such barrier preventing someone from suing a former assistant district attorney accused of misconduct so egregious that one judge on the 5th Circuit described it last year as "utterly bonkers."

At the center of the case is Ralph Petty, whose yearslong career included work as both an assistant district attorney and a law clerk—at the same time, for the same judges. In practice, that means his arguments as a prosecutor were sometimes performance art, because, as a law clerk, he had the opportunity to draft the same rulings he sought in court. It doesn't take a lawyer to deduce that the set-up presents troubling implications for due process.

One of Petty's alleged victims, Erma Wilson, would like the opportunity to bring her civil suit against him before a jury. In 2001, she was convicted of cocaine possession after police found a bag of crack on the ground near where she and some friends were gathered. Law enforcement offered to let her off if she implicated the guilty party; she said she didn't know.

Years later, that conviction continues to haunt her. Most notably, it doomed any chance of her fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse, because Texas, where she lives, does not approve registered nursing licenses for people found guilty of drug-related crimes.

Wilson's conviction coincided with the beginning of Petty's dual-hat arrangement in Midland County, Texas. Though he was not the lead prosecutor on her case, she alleges he "communicated with and advised fellow prosecutors in the District Attorney's Office" on her prosecution while simultaneously working for Judge John G. Hyde, who presided over her case, giving him "access to documents and information generally unavailable to prosecutors." (Hyde died in 2012.)

"Further undermining confidence in Erma's criminal proceedings, Petty and Judge Hyde engaged in ex parte communications concerning Erma's case," her lawsuit reads. "Consequential motions, such as Erma's motion to suppress, were resolved in the prosecution's favor throughout trial. And despite the weak evidence against her, Erma's motion for a new trial was not granted. Any of these facts by itself undermines the integrity of Erma's trial. Together, these facts eviscerate it." 

Typically prosecutors are protected by absolute immunity, which, as its name implies, is an even more robust shield than qualified immunity. But that issue is not before the 5th Circuit, because Wilson must overcome another barrier: Someone who has been convicted of a crime may not sue under Section 1983—the federal statute that permits lawsuits against state and local government employees for alleged constitutional violations—unless "the conviction or sentence has been reversed on appeal or otherwise declared invalid," wrote Judge Don Willett for the 5th Circuit in December. "The wrinkle here is that Petty's conflicted dual-hat arrangement came to light only after Wilson had served her whole sentence."

But Willett—the same judge who characterized Petty's alleged malfeasance as "utterly bonkers"—did not appear happy with his own ruling, which he said came because his hands were tied by precedent. He invited the 5th Circuit to hear the case en banc, where all the judges on the court convene to reconsider an appeal, as opposed to a three-judge panel (the usual format for evaluating cases).

The court accepted. "The defendants say that [Wilson is] forever barred from invoking that federal cause of action or any other federal cause of action unless she first persuades state officials to grant her relief. If they never do, she can never sue," Jaba Tsitsuashvili, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who is representing Wilson, argued yesterday. "In most circuits, that argument would be rejected, and rightly so."

At the center of the case is Heck v. Humphrey (1994), a Supreme Court precedent that, as Willett noted, forecloses Section 1983 relief for plaintiffs alleging unconstitutional convictions if his or her criminal case was not resolved with "favorable termination." The catch: Most federal appeals courts have established that Heck does not apply when federal habeas relief is no longer available, as is the case with Wilson. The 5th Circuit is an exception.

Perhaps soon it won't be. Yet even if the judges agree with Tsitsuashvili's interpretation of the law, Wilson is not in the clear. She will then have to explain why Petty is not entitled to absolute immunity, which inoculates prosecutors from facing such civil suits if their alleged misconduct was carried out in the scope of their prosecutorial duties. It is nearly impossible to overcome. But Petty may not be a candidate for it, because his malfeasance was technically not committed as a prosecutor. It was committed as a law clerk.

Should Wilson be granted the privilege to sue, it will be the first time an alleged victim of Petty's gets a tangible chance at recourse. There was, of course, the fact that he was disbarred, but defendants whose trials were marred by Petty likely take little comfort in that, particularly when considering it came in 2021—two years after he retired.

The post Can This Woman Sue the Rogue Prosecutor Who Allegedly Helped Upend Her Life? appeared first on Reason.com.

A federal court yesterday heard arguments in an appeal concerning an area of law that, while niche, has seen a streak of similarly situated plaintiffs pile up in recent years. At stake: When a SWAT team destroys an innocent person's property, should the owner be strapped with the bill?

There is what I would consider a commonsense answer to that question. But in a reminder that common sense does not always guide law and policy, that is not the answer reached by several courts across the U.S., where such victims are sometimes told that "police powers" provide an exception to the Constitution's promise to give just compensation when the government usurps property for public use.

It remains to be seen where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit will fall as it evaluates the complaint from Mollie and Michael Slaybaugh, who are reportedly on the hook for over $70,000 after a SWAT team destroyed much of their home in Smyrna, Tennessee.

In January 2022, Mollie Slaybaugh stepped outside her house and was greeted by a police officer with his gun drawn. She was informed that her adult son, James Jackson Conn—who did not live with her but had recently arrived to visit—was wanted for questioning concerning the murder of a police officer, which she says was news to her. Although she offered to speak to Conn and bring him out of her house, law enforcement declined to permit that, or to let her re-enter at all, so she went to stay at her daughter's house nearby.

The next day, police broke down the door and launched dozens of tear gas grenades into the Slaybaughs' home, laying waste to nearly everything in the house. Their insurance declined to assist them, as their policy—like many policies—does not cover damage caused by the government. Yet both Smyrna and Rutherford County said they were immune from helping as well.

But despite Mollie Slaybaugh's offer to coax Conn out sans tear gas, her complaint does not dispute that it was in the best interest of the community for law enforcement to do as they did that day. It merely contests the government's claim that innocent property owners should have to bear the financial burden by themselves when police destroy their homes in pursuit of a suspect.

"Law enforcement is a public good. Through our taxes, we pay for the training, equipment, and salaries of police officers. We pay to incarcerate criminals. We pay for a court system and public defenders," reads her complaint. "When the police destroy private property in the course of enforcing the criminal laws, that is simply another cost of law enforcement. Forcing random, innocent individuals to shoulder that cost alone would be as fair as conducting a lottery to determine who has to pay the police chief's salary each year."

That hypothetical is absurd. And yet the spirit of it is at the heart of several court decisions on the matter. That includes the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, which ruled last year that the Slaybaughs were not entitled to a payout because, in the court's view, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not apply when the state seizes and destroys someone's property in the exercise of "police powers."

The Slaybaughs are unfortunately not alone. The notion that "police powers" immunize the government from liability is what doomed Leo Lech's lawsuit, which he filed after a SWAT team did so much damage to his home—in pursuit of a suspect that broke in and had no relation to the family—that it had to be demolished. In 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Similar claims are continuing to accumulate. The city of Los Angeles refused to compensate Carlos Pena after a SWAT team destroyed his North Hollywood print shop in pursuit of a suspect who barricaded himself inside, and the government in McKinney, Texas, turned away Vicki Baker after police ruined her home and much of its contents while, again, trying to catch a fugitive. After a legal odyssey of sorts, Baker was able to secure a judgment from a federal jury—though that was ultimately overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which ruled there was a "necessity" exception to the Takings Clause. Most recently, the local government in South Bend, Indiana, rejected Amy Hadley's pleas for help after police mutilated her home in search of a suspect she'd never met and who'd never been to her home. An officer's botched investigation led law enforcement to her house, and she has been forced to pay the price of that blunder. Accountability should not just be for the little people.

"The plain text of the Just Compensation Clause contains no exemptions for the police power, for public necessity, or for damage done by law enforcement. And the government bears the burden of establishing that any such exception is grounded in our nation's history and tradition," Jeffrey Redfern, an attorney with the Institute for Justice representing the Slaybaughs, told the 6th Circuit yesterday. "But the government hasn't even tried to meet that burden. Instead it asks this court to blindly follow decisions from other jurisdictions—decisions whose reasoning the government isn't really defending."

In some sense, the government is throwing what it can at the wall to see what sticks. And a fair amount of nonadhesive material is successfully latching on—an exception to the laws of nature that few entities other than the government could reasonably hope to enjoy.

The post A SWAT Team Blew Up This Innocent Couple's Home and Left Them With the Bill. Was That Constitutional? appeared first on Reason.com.

In December 2022, the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) received a tip that officers assigned to the APD's DWI unit were getting paid to make cases disappear. The tipster specifically mentioned Honorio Alba, one of several officers who would later resign amid a burgeoning corruption scandal featuring that very allegation. Yet an internal investigation found no evidence to substantiate the tip.

That episode, recently revealed by City Desk ABQ, helps explain why evidence of longstanding corruption within the DWI unit did not come to light until the FBI began looking into it. "We're dealing with stuff that we anticipate started decades ago, and we've done a lot of things that have got us to this point," Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said at a press conference in February. "But we will continue to dig and look and leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this."

It seems like the department left plenty of stones unturned when it had a chance to clean its own house before the feds stepped in. Instead of telling the FBI about the alleged corruption, the APD apparently did not take the situation seriously until after it heard from the FBI.

In October 2023, 10 months after the APD's Criminal Intelligence Unit launched its fruitless probe, the FBI informed Medina that it was investigating the DWI unit. The following month, Albuquerque's Civilian Police Oversight Agency received a letter from a local court official who said Alba reportedly had pulled over a speeding, flagrantly drunk driver and, instead of filing charges, referred him to a specific local defense attorney.

The FBI investigation became public knowledge after agents executed search warrants at that attorney's office and the homes of several officers in January 2024. Local news outlets began looking into DWI cases that had been handled by Alba and his colleagues. They found suspiciously low conviction rates that somehow had eluded the APD's investigators in 2022.

In response to the corruption allegations, the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office dropped some 200 DWI cases, saying it could not rely on the testimony of the cops who had made the arrests. KOB, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque, reported that Alba, who was honored as "Officer of the Year" by the New Mexico chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving last July, was the arresting officer in many of those cases.

KRQE, the local CBS affiliate, looked at DWI cases filed during the previous six years. It found that Joshua Montaño, a 19-year veteran, "was named as the officer in at least 36 cases" in which the defendants were represented by Thomas Clear, the lawyer whose office the FBI had searched. Nearly 90 percent of those cases "ended in dismissals."

City Desk ABQ examined "85 DWI cases dating back to 2017" involving Clear and Alba, Montaño, or two other members of the DWI unit, Harvey Johnson and Nelson Ortiz. It found that 14 percent of the cases ended with trial convictions or plea deals, which was "much lower than the Metro Court average of 56% convictions in DWI cases over the same years." The other 86 percent were dismissed, typically because officers did not show up at pretrial interviews or hearings. The "vast majority" of the defendants were arrested by Alba or Montaño.

Why didn't the APD discover any of this back in 2022? Acting Sgt. Jon O'Guin "started gathering information but—after looking through officer activity—didn't turn up any evidence," City Desk ABQ reports, citing a five-page "intel file" that it obtained through a public records request.

According to the tipster, APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos told City Desk ABQ, three bars in Northeast Albuquerque were alerting police to intoxicated patrons so they could be nabbed after they drove away. "They were targeting individuals, who then could get their cases dismissed," Gallegos said, describing the tip. "So they would arrest and charge them and then get their cases dismissed and there would be some sort of payment for that."

In response to that tip, City Desk ABQ says, O'Guin examined "the activity of the seven officers who were on the DWI unit at that time, including Alba, Johnson and Montaño." But his investigation apparently was limited to the specific allegation, as opposed to the general claim that officers were helping arrestees avoid charges in exchange for payoffs.

In December 2022, the officers' activity "did not show any obvious indicators that would match the allegations of the information received for the initial complaint in regards to increased activity in the areas of the three locations mentioned in NE Albuquerque," O'Guin wrote in the intel file. "All officers' CAD [computer-aided dispatch] activity showed what would appear to be normal traffic stops and requests for assistance responses across the city." The same was true, he said, for October and November.

That summary of O'Guin's investigation is dated January 2024, by which point the FBI had collected enough evidence to obtain search warrants. "When the allegations were relayed from the FBI, the detective was asked to update the file with documentation of the work that was initially done," Gallegos explained. "So that part of the report was dated January 2024, when he provided that information."

Given the timing, O'Guin's gloss may have been deliberately self-exculpating. In any case, he evidently never thought to look at what was generally happening with the DWI cases that Alba et al. handled. If he had, he would have discovered the same curious pattern that reporters found after the FBI raids. Those high dismissal rates reinforce the allegation that these officers, after stopping drivers for DWI, would "get their cases dismissed" in exchange for "some sort of payment."

No corruption charges have been filed yet. But Alba, Montaño, Johnson, Ortiz, and Lt. Justin Hunt all resigned after they were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of another internal investigation, this one prompted by the FBI probe and the letter to the Civilian Police Oversight Agency. On Tuesday, APD spokesman Daren DeAguero, a 15-year veteran who served in the DWI unit from 2014 to 2018, joined the line of exiting officers.

DeAguero resigned the same day he was scheduled to be interviewed by internal investigators. "Due to the current situation of receiving a letter of investigation with very little time to obtain adequate representation," he wrote in a memo to Medina, "I unfortunately will be ending my employment [with] the Albuquerque Police Department effective April 30, 2024."

Montaño was more expansive when he resigned on March 20. "When I was put on administrative leave, I thought there would be an opportunity for me to talk to the department about what I knew regarding the FBI's investigation," he wrote. "I thought there would be a time [when] I could disclose what I knew from within APD and how the issues I let myself get caught up in within the DWI Unit were generational. I thought there would be a time where I could talk about all the other people who should be on administrative leave as well, but aren't."

Montaño said he ultimately decided against cooperating with APD investigators. "In order for me to talk to the City about what I knew," he wrote, "I needed to not be the City's scapegoat for its own failures." He complained that Medina "has made it seem like there are just a few bad officers acting on their own." That is "far from the truth," Montaño said.

Among other things, the FBI reportedly is investigating claims that officers deliberately missed court dates, resulting in the dismissal of DWI cases. But according to Montaño, "officers all know that our attendance, or non-attendance, at Court is watched over and monitored." While "I take responsibility for my actions," he said, the responsibility for the alleged misconduct extends up the chain of command and more than a few years back in time—probably "decades," according to Medina himself.

"There is a much bigger story here," Montaño's lawyer, Thomas Grover, told City Desk ABQ. "If Officer Montaño is a cinder block in this saga, there's a whole wall to address. It goes outward and upward."

The post A Year Before Albuquerque's Police Corruption Scandal Made Headlines, an Internal Probe Found Nothing appeared first on Reason.com.

Last July, the New Mexico chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) picked Honorio Alba Jr., a member of the Albuquerque Police Department's DWI unit, as "Officer of the Year." A few months later, Albuquerque's Civilian Police Oversight Agency received a letter about "questionable conduct" by Alba. Instead of arresting an intoxicated driver who nearly caused a crash while speeding and subsequently drove onto a curb, Alba reportedly had referred him to a specific local attorney. That letter triggered a corruption investigation, and last week Alba resigned prior to a scheduled interview with his department's internal affairs division.

Alba was one of five Albuquerque officers who were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the internal probe and a related FBI investigation. Another officer, Lt. Justin Hunt, resigned a few weeks ago. The FBI is looking into allegations that Alba and his colleagues got paid to make DWI cases disappear by failing to testify. Although no charges have been filed yet, FBI agents have executed search warrants at cops' homes and at the office of Thomas Clear, an Albuquerque attorney who specializes in DWI cases.

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina has promised to "leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this." But Medina himself is the subject of an internal investigation that he requested after he broadsided a car last month, severely injuring the driver. Medina's fishy account of that incident is apt to reinforce the public distrust generated by the corruption scandal.

In response to the corruption allegations, the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office dropped some 200 DWI cases, saying it could not rely on the testimony of the cops who had made the arrests. KOB, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque, reports that Alba was the arresting officer in many of those cases. KRQE, the local CBS affiliate, looked at DWI cases filed during the previous six years. It found that another cop who was placed on leave, Joshua Montaño, "was named as the officer in at least 36 cases" in which the defendants were represented by Clear, and "nearly 90% of those cases ended in dismissals."

Speaking in general terms about the corruption investigation at a February 2 press conference, Chief Medina noted that DWI cases often are dismissed when officers are unavailable to testify, an outcome that defense attorneys can make more likely by seeking trial delays. "Systems that struggle, systems that have loopholes, are really open to corruption," Medina said. "We're dealing with stuff that we anticipate started decades ago, and we've done a lot of things that have got us to this point. But we will continue to dig and look and leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this."

That promise of transparency and accountability was undermined two weeks later, when Medina ran a red light and collided with a car that had the right of way. On Saturday, February 17, according to a press release from the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), Medina "was headed to a news conference in his unmarked department issued vehicle"—a pickup truck—"with his wife." They were in the left turn lane on Alvarado Drive NE at the intersection with Central Avenue when they "witnessed two individuals fighting." They "then saw one of the individuals pull out a gun," and "shots were fired." Since "Chief Medina and his wife were in the direct line of fire," he "took evasive action through the intersection to get his vehicle away from the gunfire."

The official account describes what happened next without reference to Medina's culpability. "A gold Mustang was traveling eastbound on Central and continued forward as Chief Medina was entering the intersection," it says, "and the vehicles collided."

Medina gives a more detailed account in a video he recorded a few days after the crash. "When we were driving down Central," he says, "I noticed that there could possibly be a homeless encampment on Alvarado north of Central." He took a detour and drove past the encampment, planning to call an underling about it. At the intersection of Alvarado and Central, he stopped for a red light. "My wife stated, 'Look, those two homeless individuals are about to get into a fight,'" he said. "My wife stated, 'gun, gun.' I looked up, and I could hear that a shot had been fired, and I saw an individual that was holding a firearm pointing it at another individual who was directly in line with my wife."

Medina decided "the best thing I could do was get my wife out of the way and regroup and see what the best response would be." He claims he proceeded with care. "I looked to my left, and the intersection was cleared," he says. "I thought that…the car was going to pass before I got there, and it did not. And unfortunately, I struck the vehicle. The occupant of the other vehicle was injured, and it's just another sign of how gun violence sometimes impacts our community."

Former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, a former crash investigator, was skeptical of that self-exculpating story after examining surveillance video of the accident. "It's clear by the video that that wasn't the case," he told KOAT, the ABC affiliate in Albuquerque. "He cuts off a vehicle immediately. That's westbound on Central. Had to slam on its brakes. You can see that. And then he bolts across what is potentially one of the busiest roadways in the state of New Mexico and broadsides a car."

As White sees it, "the chief was not looking" because "he was distracted by something." He added, "I don't mean the shooting" because Medina was "already across the intersection" at that point.

Tom Grover, a local attorney who represents police officers accused of misconduct, sees several possible policy violations. In an interview with KOAT, "Grover said some of the violations the chief could be in trouble for include having his wife in the car and taking police action, not having his radio turned on and not turning on his lights and siren" when "he ran the red light."

Medina also belatedly activated his body camera. "My camera wasn't on at the beginning of this incident," he says in the video. "I think that everybody's been held accountable for cameras, and I wanted to make sure that I was investigated…Did I have time to turn this on? Was it proper for me to have it on before then?"

KOAT notes that "some say officers have been fired for similar conduct." In 2017, for example, an Albuquerque police officer "was rushing with lights and sirens to a call of a man armed with a machete when a car pulled out in front of him. The person driving that car died in the crash. The city fired the officer and paid more than $3 million in a civil suit." In 2013, a 21-year-old woman died after another Albuquerque officer "sped through a red light at Paseo Del Norte and Eagle Ranch, hitting her car." The city paid $8.5 million to settle a lawsuit by her family. The officer was convicted of careless driving and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller appeared unfazed by Medina's seemingly similar conduct. "Whether it's our city or the individuals that he helped, or potentially the lives that he saved because of the shooting that was happening," Keller said after the crash, "we all owe him a debt of gratitude today and every day."

This week the Albuquerque City Council rejected a proposal for an independent task force to investigate the incident. The members who voted against the idea noted that Victor Valdez, the former judge who has been charged with investigating the crash as the APD's superintendent of police reform, does not report to the chief.

"I would hope that there is no bias, but it appears like there possibly could be," said City Councilor Renee Grout, one of four council members who favored the task force. "We just need to have some accountability. We need to have transparency. I don't think that it would hurt to have this outside investigation. I think it would help the community have better trust in our APD force."

The post New Mexico MADD 'Officer of the Year' Resigns Amid DWI Corruption Scandal appeared first on Reason.com.